Mithu Sen

Mithu Sen was born in 1971 in West Bengal, India. She completed her BFA (1995) and MFA (1997) from Kala Bhavan, Visva Bharati, Santiniketan, and received the Charles Wallace Scholarship to continue with a PG Programme from the Glasgow School of Art, UK (2000–2001).

Sen’s practice stems from a conceptual and interactive background woven into drawing, poetry, moving images, installations, sculptures, sound and performances. Making “life” the medium of her practice, she pushes the limits of acceptable language, questioning our pre-codified hierarchical etiquettes in society within the politics of tabooed (cultural and gendered) identity, psycho-sexuality, radical hospitality and lingual anarchy.

She has exhibited and performed widely at museums, institutions, galleries and biennales including Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York; TATE Modern, London; Queens Museum, New York; Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, USA; Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, India; MOMAT and Tenshin Museum, Japan; Peabody Essex Museum, USA; S.M.A.K Museum, Gent, Belgium; Palais De Tokyo, Paris; Art Unlimited, Basel; Albertina Museum, Vienna; Kochi Muziris Biennale, India; Mediations Biennale, Poznań, Poland; Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka; Bozar Museum, Brussels; Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna; Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Belgium; Nature Morte, New Delhi and Berlin;  and Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai.

Sen was the first Indian artist to receive the prestigious Skoda Award for Best Indian Contemporary Art in 2010, succeeded by the Prudential Eye Award for Contemporary Asian Art in Drawing in 2015, amongst numerous others. Sen lives and works in New Delhi, India.